The invention relates to a portable voting booth which folds up into a compact carrying case and which may be set up into a free-standing booth for an election. More particularly, the invention relates to such a voting booth apparatus with novel features providing improvements in compactness, durability, convenience and versatility of uses.
Portable voting booth apparatus of the general type to which this invention relates have been in use for some time. For example, see U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,333,766, 3,389,947, 3,620,587 and 3,806,219. In general, such portable voting booths have consisted of a foldable, suitcase-like carrying case with leg sockets on the underside of the lower section of the case, for receiving break-apart legs stored in the case, and stacking buttons on the upper surface of the top section of the case, for registering with leg sockets of another voting booth case immediately above, so that a number of the folded-up booth units may be stacked together.
These voting booth apparatus have been provided with side shields which are stored within the case and which pivot up to a perpendicular position to be clipped onto the opened top section of the case to form the booth enclosure. A vote recording device has been secured inside the bottom section of the case in various ways in the prior art, and an electric lamp has been provided to provide lighting for the voter.
Self contained voting booths that have been developed heretofore were either single purpose booths to house a single voting system or useable for paper ballot or other voting systems when a shelf was overlaid the voting device or the voting device was reversed, i.e. inverted to form a shelf, for paper ballot or other voting. The present invention has allowed the multiple use of a voting booth without an overlay shelf or the inverting of the voting piece. Unlike previous booths, this suitcase type booth has a thin lower section and a flat bottom inside which can be used for paper ballot voting or other voting systems which do not use vote recording devices.
Previous self-contained portable voting booth apparatus have not had the advantageous features of compactness, lightness in weight, leg-holding stability, durability and convenience of use found in the apparatus of the present invention described below.